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Published: February 5th 2007
view from the plane
..it's the Himalayas!So…I’m back! After 2 weeks of travelling in Lhasa, Tibet and Xi’an with some friends, I’ve arrived safely back home in Chengdu, where I will remain for 36 hours before I jet off to Bangladesh to visit my parents and have a curry or two….
Anyway, so here goes my summary of the last 2 weeks! First of all, Tibet….
Early morning 2 weeks ago my flatmate Felicity, her boyfriend Gordon who is visiting for 3 weeks and our mate Brad headed off on a flight to Lhasa from Chengdu. The funniest thing even before we set off was when our escort waved the irritatingly-expensive-and-very-vague Tibet permit in front of the desk attendant’s face, and we went straight through to the departure lounge. This was hilarious because after all the time and effort and money we had taken to get this bloody thing, it turned out to be a scrap of flimsy paper with our names handwritten on it, we saw it that one time, and never again!
Anyway the flight was fine, 2 hours only, and the views of the Himalayas were amazing (‘we’re flying over the Himalayas!!!’ I kept on thinking). Arriving at Lhasa we immediately
noticed the cold, the unbelievably blue sky and I felt as though I was a wee bit tipsy, which I guess ended up as the start of altitude sickness. We set off on a bus to Lhasa itself, as the airport is in the middle of nowhere. 90 minutes later we arrived in the city, wandered around looking lost for a while before hopping in a taxi and agreed on staying at the Kirey (jiri binguan in pinyin) hostel. After paying for 2 rooms between us, we dumped our too-heavy rucksacks on the cold floor and hey, we were in Lhasa!
The hostel ended up to be a good choice. It’s on the main street in Lhasa, close to restaurants and the market, and was also very cheap, partly due to it being low season I guess - we paid 25 RMB each per night. The rooms had 2 beds each, with storage, flasks with hot water which was topped up during the day, and free laundry. It was bloody freezing at night, but we weren’t gonna pay over the odds just to have heated rooms, come on!
I won’t go on a day by day description as
one I can’t remember and two it would be pretty boring to read. I’ll first begin with altitude sickness however as I think I got hit the worst by it out of all of us and it was a real pain in the arse but there’s nothing you can do about it, so for those of you who are heading to Tibet, read this to know what to expect, as it might be you! For the first couple of days 3 out of the 4 of us laid low as we were plagued by constant headaches, general tiredness and a feeling of walking through mud, particularly when walking up stairs. I was fine on the 3rd and 4th day, then seemed to get hit again, when I felt nauseous (every time I got out of bed I felt as though I was going to throw up), migraine, loss of appetite, insomnia, and general zombie-ness like feeling. This continued for 3 days, which pretty much sucked as I spent almost the entire time in bed feeling sorry for myself. However on the last day we were there I felt well enough to have a peruse round the masssssssive market(s) and have
market in Lhasa
near the Jokhang some dinner before we left Lhasa for good. If you get hit by altitude sickness, you can get the medicine you need there, but take some with you in case you can’t move or don’t have friends to buy it for you! All you can do is rest and drink lots of water/tea, believe me, you won’t feel like doing anything else until you’re over it. So next time I go to Tibet (which will be in the summer), I will go for a month so I can spend the first week in bed!
Ok, whinging over. One morning, Gordon and I headed off in search of the Drepung Monastery, a few miles outside the city (the other two were too knackered). It was once the largest monastery in the world, and had ten thousand monks in residence by the time of the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-82). It was founded in 1416 by Jamyang Choje, a leading disciple of Tsongkhapa (it’s all Greek to me….) and suffered very little damage during the Cultural Revolution, thank goodness.
We set off in the early morning as the guide book suggested, but ran into hiccups on the way as we were
on a bus full of pilgrims by 8am, but didn’t leave until close to 9am - here, no one’s ever in a hurry, they just leave when they feel like it. Anyway 15 minutes later we arrived at Drepung, and all was quiet as the sun was just rising, it was very beautiful but also very cold. The monastery itself is definitely worth a look, endless steps and little squares, paintings, prayer wheels, monks’ quarters, shrines, and if you go in the morning like we did you get some fantastic views across the Kyichu Valley, and also hardly any other people to stare or follow you. We were the only ‘laowei’ (foreigners) there at that time. It only took us about 90 minutes to walk around the place (clockwise of course) before we were ready to head back to the hostel for some well-deserved breakfast.
On one of the days when we all felt A-ok, we headed to the must-see sight of Lhasa, the Potala Palace. Again, we didn’t see any other laowei there. We definitely noticed the benefits of travelling to Lhasa - and other places in China - in low season, i.e. winter. The admission fees to
places are half the price if not less, as are the hostel prices, and there are hardly any other tourists about. It is if course pretty cold, but that’s a price worth paying I think.
For those of you who don’t know much about the Potala Palace (and I didn’t before I went), here’s some background info: The Palace is so named after India’s Riwo Potala, which is the holy mountain of the god Chenresi. It served as the centre and home of all the Dalai Lamas. It was built in the 7th century, but has been rebuilt in the years since - it survived the Cultural Revolution (amazingly), word is that Zhou Enlai ordered its protection.
The Potala Palace cost us 100 RMB to get in - no discount unless you are disabled, though if I were disabled I really wouldn’t want to attempt the Palace! There are a lot of steps so you need to attempt it after you’ve acclimatised. Anyhow, we spent a couple of hours wandering about, nodding to the monks we saw and occasionally having a chat with some who wanted to practice their English. I never knew when to speak in Chinese,
English or my few words of Tibetan, but one of the three usually worked! Even if we just said ‘tashi delay’ (hello in Tibetan) it seemed to make people’s day! Needless to say, the Palace was awesome in the old sense of the word (and not the ‘totally awesome dude!’ type way), beautiful and tranquil, all that I wanted it to be. From the Palace you can see the People’s Park, which is directly opposite, and comprises of a massive area of concrete, with a tall, thin monument celebrating ‘liberation’, which seems to be a middle finger sticking up at the Palace itself - however it’s pretty cold, plain and ludicrous frankly, as how could it ever rival the Palace?! It’s laughable really, and very Chinese. Don’t get me wrong, I love China, but oh how they do love their concrete. Apparently last year they imported over half of the world’s concrete!
During the days where I stayed in bed, the others visited a few other sites in and around Lhasa, but you’ll have to click on my flatmate Felicity’s page if you want info on them, as I’m clueless! However during our time there we did manage to
me and a random Tibetan woman
we were walking down the street and she saw us and immediately said 'photo?' and was as pleased as punch to pose with us! She had gold teeth as well. Which deserves a mention. have one or two (or three, or four) looks around the never ending markets in the Barkhor area.
Traditionally, pilgrims to Lhasa circled the city clockwise, one of the routes being the Barkhor circuit, close to the walls of the Jokhang temple/monsastery. It now consists of a market stretching almost down to the Potala area, where you can buy clothes, prayer wheels, prayer flags, jewellery, shoes, souvenirs, posters, maps, carpets, anything to do with a yak, stuff from Nepal and India, accessories for Tibetan women, and so much more. As you wander around, there are also hundreds of people prostrating (is that the right word?) in front of the Jokhang, praying and chanting, all day long until past dusk. You can bargain how you want, most of the locals find it heavily amusing as I think a lot of laowei don’t bother bargaining much - the general rule, I’d say, is to lower their asking price to less than half, and go from there. Eg they say ‘100 kwai!’ I say ‘tai guile… (‘too expensive’)…er shi (20 kwai)?’ They gasp in mock horror and we go from there, usually until I walk away, and they drag me back, and
we agree on a price. It’s fun but sometimes quite time consuming and tiring!
So, to summarise, Lhasa was a great experience, the altitude sickness was a real bummer, but what can you do - absolutely nothing! We would have liked to go further afield but many other options were closed due to bad weather or just that fact that it was winter, eg Namtso Lake, the highest lake in the world, was closed as it was winter, and to get to Mount Everest takes several days and costs 3000 RMB which is almost my entire month’s salary, so not this time thank you! The Tibetan people were friendly and welcoming, and curious of course. The Chinese ‘occupation’ was felt of course almost everywhere you went, but I didn’t feel it as an ominous presence or anything, it’s just the way life is, especially in China, it’s all push push push onto the next and most modern thing, which unfortunately sometimes doesn’t respect or remember the ways of the past or of a different people. Go there though. I urge you to go go go!!!
My next blog will be about Xi'an...including our 36 hour train journey there
from Lhasa...
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